Insatiable Curiosity

"Daddy, I just read about four countries: Japan, Mexico, Italy and China! Most of Italy has farmland and it's well known for its food, clothes and beautiful land. And Japan has a lot of technology and is really good at that. They even have a robot that looks like a person. They have lots of little islands, four big islands and Tokyo is their biggest city," Sennen said on the way out the door this morning.

Our kids have always spent a lot of time with their books, so choosing which few we could take for the summer was a wrenching task. That's when we came up with the idea of an iPad that could act as a portable library – allowing to bring almost anything they wanted as well as other things such as providing TV and movies in English and using a limited number of educational apps. Emily's parents were generous enough to make it the kids' birthday gift. We – and especially I – approached this with trepidation as we have always been very tight on screen time and have never given the kids a handheld device including our phones. 

We made sure to put a couple of reading/book apps on the iPad – Dr Seuss and Epic which is essentially a library of educational books and stories. As soon as we were on our own in Israel and had time in the mornings, much to our pleasant surprise, the kids woke up and opened up books on the iPad, which can read the books to them. On Epic, there's a Sennen and an Ailyn profile, giving each of them a list of books appropriately pitched to their age and level. So, they can simply self-access and either actively read as Sennen sometimes does, or have the books read to them which is what they do most of the time.

Similar to Netflix, Epic makes suggestions and the kids tend to select from those which have led them to a variety of books ranging from stories to science to history. Then, a few days ago Emily noticed how much Sennen was retaining from a couple of the National Geographic books on the Titanic and a few U.S. presidents. She searched for the entire series and moved them into a Favorites section for him to access easily. Now, Sennen walks down the streets of Skala telling us about George Washington's cause of death, Abraham Lincoln's assassin and the key drivers of the Japanese economy.

In the mornings, Sennen does not like to be disturbed when he's in the middle of a book, soaking up immense amounts of knowledge that he spends the rest of the day processing. All of this is in addition to his morning Greek Mythology sessions which as we've discussed, he's addicted. 

But what makes Sennen's learning worth a blog post isn't simply that he tears through books memorizing the American presidency and understanding the factors that led to the Titanic disaster – which he cares about deeply. It's the bigger concepts that Sennen spends his time digesting and discussing – often spurred by his experiences abroad – that surprise us, keep us on our toes and that we want to memorialize for future reference.

For more than a year, Sennen has been chewing on the ideas of imperialism the seeds of which were originally planted by Singapore and Hong Kong. Israel reignited the spark with discussions of Assyrian, Roman, Ottoman and British Empires. He wants to understand why people would take over each other's countries, why empires come and go, the historical order of the empires in the Mediterranean. Why if Greece had an empire and was strong did Rome come and take over – but then Rome liked Greek culture so much it adopted it? Why did Turkey want Greece and what did it do with it? How is it if Turkey owned Greece for many hundreds of years did Greek culture remain different from Turkey (one of my favorite questions)? A complete list of modern countries that the Ottoman Empire once encompassed and its reasons for acquiring these territories. A complete list of the British Empire's holdings and why did Britain take over so much of the world (one of the most intriguing questions if you really dive into it)? Which were Britain's first colonies? Did King George III who ruled over the American colonies also rule over Hong Kong? Why did Britain return Hong Kong to China? Why did Hong Kongers prefer Britain? Why did Britain treat them better than China? Why did Britain lease the New Territories if that only made them have to give Hong Kong back when they could have kept it forever if they had stuck to Hong Kong Island and Kowloon? Which countries today had colonies? Why did each one have them? Which countries in Europe speak the same languages as one another (i.e. Germany and Austria; France and Belgium) Was it because one used to "own" the other? This list goes on.

Sennen also is coming to understand the European Union and why Greece would voluntarily join with other countries in Europe to share money are common rules. He wanted to understand how the countries all combined to use the same money and therefore, how money is valued. Which countries are not in the Eurozone, but are part of the EU and why? Which countries are in Europe and not part of the EU and why? Does the EU also mean the countries have a military alliance to protect themselves against other countries? What if two or more countries within the EU disagree and threaten to go to war with each other? And then one question that many in Turkey would like: Why isn't Turkey a part of the EU – especially since part of it is in Europe? We also touched on NATO vs the EU but haven't gone too far with it yet.

Yesterday over lunch, Sennen began considering how the shift from agrarian to industrial to post-industrial economies have devalued the need for empire since our economy is now based on ideas more than agrarian resources. I thought he would have trouble with the concept – but as Emily pointed out afterward, he totally got it and has processed more challenging than that.

Economic concepts aren't new to Sennen. He likes to think about why some people have more than others, how his parents earn money and provide for him, where we our family lies on the financial spectrum, what people who don't have as much do to get by and how unfair it is that people with more money can afford healthier food when poorer people need good nutrition even more.

Given Sennen's zeal for Judaism, it's not altogether surprising that he wants to understand the religions of others – what they believe, when their religions came into being and why. Thailand has given him some grounding in Buddhism and he has awareness of Hindu from Bali. This year, Islam and Christianity have taken a front seat thanks to Israel, Greece and Turkey. When did Christianity become popular? How did Greece switch from the Hellenistic pantheon to Christianity. How does Greek Orthodox differ from much of the Christianity in America. Why do some women wear head scarves? Why do they have the call to prayer at mosques? And when they do, why doesn't anyone seem to go (a very Turkey question)? 

Environment is often on Sennen's radar. Why does Greece have better recycling than Turkey? Why does Greece require us to separate our recyclables whereas at home we have mixed recycling? Why is there no apparent green waste in Greece? Why is there less organic food in the markets of Patmos? Why is there more goat and sheep milk and cheese in Greece (because they have lots of brushy lands, but not so much grass pasture – which made sense to Sennen since he could quote how many pounds of grass per day a cow eats…)? If Patmos doesn't get much rain, how is there enough water for everyone? Why aren't there more water filters in people's homes and restaurants instead of all this bottled water? Why does Greece have smaller cars than America and how is that better for the environment? Why is manual transmission more fuel efficient? If gas is expensive here, why aren't more cars electric? Why doesn't Greece have more solar panels on people's roofs? 

A couple of weeks ago, Sennen wanted to understand cancer, heart disease and sicknesses that kill people which are not communicable diseases. Why do genes make mistakes? What causes mistakes? Why do people's immune systems sometimes stop killing off mutant cells? Which kinds of cancer can we treat and which can't we? How does smoking contribute to cancer? Why does sunscreen prevent cancer? How does eating bad food create heart attacks? What is a stroke? Can people survive cardiac events? Why and why not? Let's just say that Sennen is pretty eager to sunscreen up and wonders constantly why so many people in Greece and Turkey smoke if they know how bad it is for them (which is a question on my mind ALL THE TIME).

Sennen's scientific mind wants to discover cures for diseases, remove pollution from the air and shoot it into outer space and figure out a way for healthy food to be cheap enough for everyone to have. He also firmly believes dolphins must be the smartest animals on earth because they have two brains.

Almost like a computer, Sennen seems to have math running in the back of his mind. We can be driving in the car and he'll ask if 96 + 4 equals 100. Or he'll ask if Thanksgiving is three months after we get home from Greece because August is the 8th month and Thanksgiving is in November which is the 11th month. These things seem to come out in between discussions of what's for dinner, Turkish religious practices and the TV show he watched last night. While applications of addition and subtraction make up most of his math-oriented talk, the occasionally multiplies and once in awhile dives into mathematical theory like how numbers can go on forever. What's the number BEFORE infinity? Doesn't there have to be a last one? He also wants to understand the hierarchy of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, trillions. The idea of infinity really screws with Sennen. He would prefer the world be finite, measurable and therefore more comprehensible.

Lastly, we spend a lot of time on geography. Sennen can tell you most of Greece's neighbors, Turkey's neighbors, Thailand's neighbor's, etc. He often asks for lists of the Greek islands by size and then by population. Lists of countries by physical size and population. He is constantly trying to get an idea of how big or small the places he knows are in relation to one another and the world (How many Patmoses would fit into Westlake Village? How many Patmoses would fit inside California? How many times would Greece fit inside California?). Not surprisingly, Sennen's mental gaze has landed on England as an interestingly anomaly. He recognizes that it's cultural and economic impact – and its former colonial empire are very out of proportion with its size and location. America – a large country – makes more sense to him. We're big, we have a big economy, therefore we're well-known and powerful. But England… how did that happen? Well, that is a topic many scholars continue to tackle as does Sennen.

One day when our children read this post, I want Ailyn to know that she is just as wonderful and accomplished a person as Sennen and we are equally as proud and enchanted by her. She is beyond amazing, just with different focuses and talents. As are so many children we know and love. There remains something undeniable about Sennen's uniqueness. Travel is a consistent catalyst for him. Something about Sennen's operating system puts him into learning overdrive overseas. We come back from every trip with changed children – and clear educational shifts for Sennen. Moreover, the education of Sennen is a major part of our travels. The space he occupies and the resources he requires are significant – and often exhausting for us. But for whatever we give, he shows us how much he does with it as we watch him unfold like a flower constantly budding into something amazing and beautiful – and like nothing we could imagine. Sennen's path of learning is part of our travel adventures.